


kisses four

by Ellipsical



Series: Oh! how I love [6]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blow Job, Boxing, Established Relationship, F/M, It's For a Case, John is the honey, M/M, Masturbation, Modern AU, Rimming, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual fantasies gone awry, The Reichenbach fucking fall man, honey pot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-29 03:19:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10845405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellipsical/pseuds/Ellipsical
Summary: John finds Sherlock's journal. He decides to write down a memory of his own.Title taken from Keats' poem,La Belle Dame sans Merci.





	1. I

I just left you at the cove.

I was out having a morning swim and who should be sitting on shore when I exited the sea, but my two favorite companions in all this world. You kissed me and I dripped seawater onto your white shirt and your eyes were like opals in the sunshine and your hair was tousled by the wind and you were simply breathtaking. I wanted you, as I ever do, each and every time I see you. Something stirs in me and I feel you rising in me. I was leaving salty fingerprints all over your skin and you tasted sweetly, of milky sugared tea, and I would have pulled you down with me into the sand, but you pushed me away and you were laughing and there was still sleep caught in the corners of your eyes and instead I squeezed your ankles, which smelled of the crushed grass and wild flowers you had just walked through, and I watched you and Toby saunter off down the beach. Your jeans were rolled up and you were barefoot so that you could enjoy the waves breaking on the shore. Toby was leaping in the surf, mouthing at the churning bubbles, and I felt so full of gratitude it ached a bit.

I watched the two of you until you disappeared around the bend, towards town, and then I made my way home.

I don’t think you meant for me to find it. I can never be sure with you of course, but I think the notion of a walk struck you as you were writing at your desk and that Toby was sitting in front of the door waiting for me and the day was particularly fine and so you left it out accidentally where I could find it.

I didn’t go looking for it. Please believe that I have no desire to uncover any secrets of yours. It was entirely innocent, I assure you. I was merely looking for the cheque book in your desk drawer and it was there, open and full of your neat handwriting. And when I saw what you had written, well, I admit that I read a few lines more.

I’ve told you this a thousand thousand times and I am sure I will tell you a thousand thousand more, but you are a genius.

An erotic memoir! What a novel concept. Leave it to you to come up with it. Are you cataloguing our liaisons, my love? I will say that the one I caught a few jots of is one of my particular favorites as well. That encounter on the overnight train from Amsterdam to Prague should be immortalized in an epic poem. Do you remember how desperate we were? Knowing anytime could be our last. That Moriarty was hot on our trail. That you knew you would have to take drastic measures in the immediate future. I am glad you wrote of the train and not the night in the hotel before the falls. I still wish…

Well.

I wish many things, but that is not why I sat down to write this note.

I sat down to write this note to reminisce about a time when we finally, I hope, laid all that to rest. I hope what follows makes you smile. I hope it makes you blush. And I hope it makes you come find me instantly to commence some new deprivation upon my person immediately.

  
**********

 

It was late August. Summer last.

I do not need to remind you do I?

Of the case we had just closed?

It will remain one of the only officially unsolved in your index I believe. Unofficially, however…

Amelia Cartwright.

Amelia sodding Cartwright.

I can imagine the smile pulling at your mouth right now. You will be trying desperately to quell it. Your lips will twitch and purse and you will end up hiding it behind your hand.

Your eyes will betray you, my dear. Oh, the bright mischief that will glow when you read her name on this page! There will be a grudging admiration there as well, not to mention, the remembered thrill of the chase. When you are through reading this, come find me, and we’ll drink to her name.

On that day in August we were not so blasé about it, were we?

We barely spoke on the car ride down from London and I remember that you spent the night in your lumber room and I, fitfully, in our bed.

Around 4am I finally fell asleep and didn’t waken until after 11. You were no where to be found. I put on my trainers and headed out into the soupy heat, hoping that a run would clear my mind.

It didn’t work.

The temperature was already reaching 33 degrees and the humidity was at 100%. Thunderheads crowded the sky, their bellies turgid, bruised with rain. The sun broke through in hazy streaks, and even the Channel was tepid and stuck to my skin when I splashed some water on my face on the way home. I shortened my route and came back early, drenched in sweat and intending to suggest that we take a drive further north towards more temperate climes for a few days. Put the case behind us. We were supposed to be in Sussex to see you recover, after all. You will remember that I never wanted to take the bloody thing on in the first place, but Mycroft pleaded and you were restless after a summer away, and London trained its siren call on you.

You never have been able to resist her.

You were in the garage, when I arrived back at the cottage; I could hear you as I came up the drive. Hitting that old leather punch bag that had followed you around ever since university, but which now we had the space to hang, over and over and over. I followed the dull thud of your fists, looking forward to giving you a kiss and clearing the air between us, before running a cold shower.

And then I saw you.

There are times when I simply want to be taken. To be overpowered by you. We have spoken of it between us before. How illicit it feels to give up control, how thrilling it is to be roughly handled, to be vulnerable and completely in someone else’s hands.

Your hands.

When I saw you through the open door, shirtless and still clad only in your loose fitting white pyjama bottoms, I was struck with this longing so strongly I froze. Your arse in those things. My God man. And you never wear any pants under them so you must know the effect it has on me. You must know how that thin see-through cotton molds itself to your round cheeks and how it slips into the space between, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. Christ, it made my mouth water, watching you dip and spar, bend and shuffle and bounce. Your arm muscles were bulging, all of you straining tight taut hard, and your stomach was flexed and you were wet all over with sweat. You were moving gracefully around the bag, hitting it hard, all your strength thrown behind each blow. The reverberations rippled through you, tiny tremors beneath your pale gleaming flesh. I stood outside in the sun just staring. Your hair was falling across your forehead in thick black strands and you had this look on your face; one of the utmost concentration. Years ago I would have said that your expression bordered on a cold fury, but I could tell the difference now. You were not angry, you were intent.

When I stepped into the doorway my shadow fell over the floor, blocking out the slash of sunlight that lit the dim space, and you stopped what you were doing and turned towards me.

Your eyes swept over me and cut me straight through. How do you do that? And so quickly too. One look and you could see everything I was thinking. Everything I wanted, but couldn’t ask for. I blushed and I stung, nettled with embarrassment, with need. We both know that I have a filthy mind. That I need certain things from you more than I think I should. You have never made me feel ashamed of them, on the contrary, you have always indulged my desires, even when they are dark or difficult to articulate, but the instinct to deny them is inbred and I can’t help it, I bit my tongue and swallowed against the words that threatened to spill forth.

After the events of the night before, it seemed even more impossible to state them.

You were breathing hard. Your chest was heaving with exertion and I could smell you from where I stood. I watched as one of the beads of sweat that perched trembling on your clavicle began to track down, between your pectorals, riding the ridges of your stomach, before pooling in the hollow of your belly button. It left a glossy line behind it, a comet’s tail; it caught the light and shone. My tongue slipped out between my lips and drew wetly across them. I was parched, I was burning, the sun at my back drawing my skin tight across my shoulders, and you before me, a different source of heat all together, the intensity of your gaze and the sheer force of your body, my blood ran hot through my veins, and I shivered, as from a fever.

There was a space between us, a chasm I could not cross, even if I wanted desperately to do so. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words would come.

Your voice was deep and resounded through the quiet space, “Pick a number. It must be under five.”

You could have been referring to anything. The number of minutes I would have to come. The number of fingers you would use on me. The number of times I would be denied. The number of days you would be gone from our bed.

“Three,” I hedged, giddy with nerves.

You nodded slowly and came towards me, discarding your gloves as you went.

You own me, do you know it?

You must.

Despite what had happened the night before, despite Amelia bloody Cartwright, you have to know it in your heart.

I am yours.

When you were near you reached out and wrapped a hand around my throat.

Light.

You did not need to squeeze to make me feel it. I belonged to you, I trusted you, and I was giving you control.

You accepted it, your fingers sliding in a slow sticky drag around the back of my neck, your thumb taking my pulse beneath my jaw, your palm heavy and rough against my Adam’s apple. I swallowed for the feel of it, the weight against me, the power held in check.

Did you feel how hard my heart was beating for you? The concussive thud of it against the pad of your thumb? You stroked it. Over and over.

You dipped your head and I thought you were going to kiss me at last, but instead you whispered, “What did she taste like?”, two inches from my mouth, and it knocked the breath from my lungs.

I squeezed my eyes shut and thought, _brandied plums_ , but didn’t say it. She had tasted of dessert. Ripe full-bodied sweetness on my tongue. Liqueur on her breath as I had kissed her jaw. And then, lower down, the floral unfurling of her perfume.

“Wine,” I prevaricated, my pulse jangling. I didn’t want to talk about her. I didn’t want to talk about the things I had done while you watched. You were there. You saw. You were directing the entire show for God’s sake.

“She looked soft,” you purred. “Was she?”

_Her shoulders, bare beneath my hands: tawny brown satin._

“She was not interested in me,” I said tightly. To me you were being spectacularly unfair. “It was you she was trying to land.”

“You do yourself an injustice,” you said. “I don’t think you know what you look like when you’re all done up in your army kit and have had one too many whiskeys.”

I grunted and started to pull away, irritated, but you tightened your grip just slightly, holding me in place.

“The red suits you. It accentuates your shoulders and the breadth of your chest. And thanks to all the rugby this summer you filled it’s lines beautifully. You are ever the same blithe boy I met ten years ago, you know. Brown as a nut, slim as a lathe. You can blame the whiskey on me. I sent three when I should have only sent two, but you’re absolutely enchanting when you’re drunk. You get adorably pink in the cheeks and your lips grow wet and lush from you licking them constantly. Biting them. You know it drives me mad. Who could blame her if she felt the same?” I was about to protest, feeling off kilter and vaguely guilty, when you tipped my chin up and to the right and thumbed at the purple mark high up on my neck.

Pain twinged and I felt the echo of her mouth on me, the suction and the bite, the wet lave of her tongue soothing the brand, and in contrast, your eyes on me from across the room, boring into me.

“Did she use her teeth?” you asked.

“What is this?” I asked, prickling. My cheeks filled with a rush of heat. “Punishment? Because—”

“John, be still.”

I took a deep breath in through my nose and I was filled at once with your scent. The singe of your sweat and the thick musk of your arousal, combined with the lingering rich scent of leather from the gloves, the faint sear of petrol from the car, and the smell of sun scorched grass from outside, it overwhelmed me. I could feel the heat pouring off you. I wanted to be engulfed in it. I wanted to obliterate all memory of the night before from both of our minds.

“I—“

“Be still.”

I fisted my hands at my sides and grit my teeth.

You bent your head. You whispered, “You have no idea what it’s like to kiss you,” into my ear and I trembled, my eyes slipping shut, sliding into darkness and the rough thunder of your voice in my ear. “The way your mouth blooms, John. God, the sweet pout of your lips and the way they open fully to me. The way you tip your head back and offer yourself up. The wanton sounds you make. Oh, John. _Yes_ ,” you gasped as I made them. Whining shamelessly for you. Needy. Desperate. “ _Sherlock_.” I wanted your mouth on me. I wanted you to tip my head back and take my offering, to lick between my lips, and slip deep. But you just breathed in my ear and murmured, “I can’t blame her for stealing one from you. Can you?”

_The fleeting touch of her carmine painted lips, they caught against my own. And then the flicker of her tongue, slick and plush against my bottom lip. The scrape of her teeth in its wake and the glint in her eyes as she pulled away and said, low and confident, "Shall we invite your husband up as well, Dr. Watson? It seems like he likes to watch." The way her gleaming black hair had spilled down her back as she turned, blowing both of our covers in a single sweep, and fixed you with a smile from across the room._

Beads of sweat dripped down my spine beneath my vest. Dripped down your chest. My tongue longed for the wet salt taste of it.

The sun behind me.

You, before me.

Me between, alight.

An ember crushed and pulsing with white light.

I wanted to touch you, but you hadn’t given me permission yet. I held myself in check, swaying in your loose grip. Held fast.

And then…

You stepped away.

My knees loosened. I almost fell.

“Take off your clothes,” you said.

What could I do?

But obey?

 

 


	2. II

“I thought about you,” you said, in a hushed tone, “while I was dead.”

My face did something complicated at those words. My face always does something when you bring up the two years we spent apart. Me, as a widow, you, as a fugitive. I was sitting there on a folding chair, starkers, and my thighs were sticking to the leather seat cushion, my feet were pressed to the icy concrete, my hands curled around my knees, my cock hard and leaking against my stomach, and my face was doing a complicated thing.

You saw it, but didn’t stop. Your eyes blazed at me, defiant.

“I used to think about you, fucking other people.”

My body flashed. Cold and then hot. The tops of my ears prickled. Icy fingers stroked down my spine. I broke out in goosebumps.

“Sherlock,” I said, my lips slightly numb. “Sherlock, I never—“

“I know.”

I leaned forward. “I _never_ —“

“I know.”

You were sitting across from me on an identical folding chair, your arms draped over the seat back, your knees splayed to either side. I wanted to touch you. I always want to touch you. But.

You never talk about it. Your time away. Did the game make it possible? Was it Amelia? A combination of the two?

You went on, in fits and starts, “It was difficult…”

I nodded as you licked your lips.

Difficult.

My throat burned at the utter inadequacy of that word to explain what it had been.

“…to think of you…”

Difficult.

“…of us…” you swallowed and I think you almost broke. Christ, Sherlock I would have let you. It was only a silly game, but I, I was being a bastard. Greedy. I wanted to hear what you would say next. I didn’t stop you. I probably should have, but I held my breath instead. “…in our bed.”

You pushed on, “It was easier to imagine you with other lovers. To touch you through them. There was a boy in Scotland, the summer you were 18, and you were sent to help your grandfather on his farm. What was his name?”

“Calum,” I rasped, leaning back in my seat, my knees falling open.

Oh, the condescension in your smile. “Ah, yes, your wee dove. He was your first man, yes? I thought so.” Your eyes were glassy. Your voice was rough. My skin tingled. With the heat, with desire. “You were clearing an old field and you used to lunch under the trees, lying in the grass, eating sandwiches and apples. Eighteen and God, John, the way I saw you in my mind. Scything wheat. No shirt. Tight fitting jeans. Boots. Sweat running down your chest. Just like right now.

“Laid out for me in the grass, one arm crooked behind your head. My freckled, golden boy. Poor Calum wouldn’t have known what to do with you. You would have been out of his league. Licking apple juice off his fingers and wishing it was the taste of your skin. He was poorly suited to the task and he knew it, but he was driven half mad with lust and who could resist you? At eighteen and, quite frankly, spectacular, tan with your muscles and your easy smile and your blue eyes. I would have risked everything to kiss you too.

“I did. In my head. I kissed you and you startled. Your lips were sun-chapped and dry and salty, but god they were soft underneath and when I brushed them again, you tensed. When I opened my eyes you were staring up at me in shock and then you fisted your hand in my shirtfront and I didn’t know whether or not you were going to throw me or kiss me.”

I tried to imagine it, you in place of Calum. Calum had been terrified. Rough and furtive and ashamed. He kissed like a punch, hard and explosive, sharp teeth and pressure, without finesse or pleasure. It had been hand jobs behind old crumbling sheds and frottage while swimming in the pond. It had been a blowjob in a movie theater and once, a quick, dry, painful fuck bent over my grandfather’s kitchen table with my fist in my mouth and only spit for lube, the night before I was heading back to school.

You at eighteen. You would have been something else. Tall and too skinny. Miles of legs and unkempt hair and too beautiful to look at. Your mouth would have been in a permanent sneer. I’ve seen pictures, don’t try to deny it. Your eyes were a warning, cold and lupine, and you wore disdain like armor. What would I have done with that boy? That boy that kept his distance and, when someone got too close, cut them to the quick. Revealed all their secrets, even the ones they were keeping from themselves. Made them bleed before they could hurt you. Your walls would have been a provocation. The affection starved lost boy that I was, Christ, I only knew how to mistake hate for love at that point. I would have chased you, would have kissed you, not the other way around. I would have been Calum, desperate and hungry, would have wrestled you down into the grass with me and pinned you there and tried my best to keep you.

“I knelt up but you held onto me…”

_Your black hair stark against the wheat. Catkins caught in the ends, where it was curling from the heat. Your cheeks would have been sunburned, your lips as well. All of you blushing scarlet under my hands._

“When I reached for my zipper you caught on and after a moment reached for your own…”

_Buttons popping, the scrape of denim leaving livid marks on your long white thighs as you pulled them down far enough to let your cock spring out._

“You held out your hand to me and said, ‘Get it wet,’ and I kissed your palm, letting the saliva spill out of my mouth, and then you reached down and wrapped it around your cock and groaned.”

I did. I held out my hand to you, there in the garage, and you did just as you said, filled my palm with a pool of your spit and my fist was tight and slick around my dick and I groaned, and groaned for you. For the wet of your mouth on my cock and your words in my ears. Erasing Calum and penciling yourself into my past. Rewriting my memories. Rewiring my neural pathways. Leaving only you, you, you.

_You, below me, my hand on your prick, stroking you as your eyes got wider and wider and your mouth dropped open. Walls down. Let me, let me, I begged. Let me see._

You, in Paris, Hong Kong, Salzburg, Calgary, getting off with my eighteen year old self in a wheat field in the middle of July.

Me, in London, writing you down on paper to try and bring you back to life.

Our bed, in our home, in your dreams, empty. Unbearable unless we could be together.

I slept for two years upstairs on a twin mattress.

“Show me,” you whispered, throat thick, pale eyes fierce, and I did. I spread my legs wider and I squirmed against the seat, my knees shifting restlessly, my hand pulling at my cock. Canting it down and out for you to see the slide of my foreskin, my palm dragging over the soaked head, smearing the hot proprietary flood of your mouth into the slit, dissolving it in the drops of my come pulsing out between my fingers.

“ _John_ ,” you gasped like you were dying.

_Your cock throbbing inside my hand, your silky skin melting melting melting, the sight of you, eighteen and pretentious, posh, and utterly utterly vulnerable, searing itself into my bones, my blood. Thinking, let me, let me…_

“Yeah. Yes. _John_.”

and I came, shaking. Shaking. Streaking the dusty floor with come, spilling out and over my fingers. Rattled. Rattling. My heart racing too fast. Careening. I stood and staggered to you. I pulled you up and pushed you back until you hit the car door. I knelt at your feet, still trembling all over, still shivering, still full up with you.

You.

You.

You at eighteen conjuring yourself as a red headed Scot knelt up over my lap, our hands flying over our cocks, my fist in his- _your_ \- shirt, our foreheads digging into each other, like we could exorcise it from each other if we just got it over quick enough.

You at forty-seven, watching a woman suck on my neck from across the room. 

Your thighs parted. Your knees bent. Your hands cupped my head.

“I was hard all night,” you whispered as I molded my hands to your hips, your sheer white pajama bottoms, indecent, hanging on by a thread. One tug and I could have had them down to puddle around your ankles. “Watching her touch you.”

I leaned forward and ran the tip of my nose up the length of your erection. You smelled intoxicatingly good, of sweat and sex and come and soap. There was a wet spot at the tip and I licked it, tasting salt and detergent. When I pulled away the fabric clung to the head, your skin glowing red through the vellum layer of cotton.

You, hard in your trousers, as the wedding guests milled around the hall. Your eyes on me at the bar, sipping the whiskey you had sent over.

Waiting.

You, watching while I chatted her up. While she touched my shoulder, my waist. A dance, a flirtation of smiles and eyes.

I licked.

_Let me._

I sucked, pulling you and your pajamas into my mouth at once.

I fit my hand to you, rubbing, the cotton adding friction. You pushed your hips forward and when I looked up your head was tipped back, your eyes were closed, your mouth hanging open.

_Let me. See.  
_

I spit, thick, against you, and watched it seep through. Your cock, plummy and thick and dark and straining through the thin layer. Musk in my nose and come a bitter ghost on my tongue. Sweat slick skin gliding beneath my fingers as I swept my hand up your chest to tug on your nipples. One at a time.

“ _John_ ,” you gasped, as if you were drowning.

Your cock head, plump and leaking all over the flat of my tongue. My other hand working you, palm grinding into you, down through flesh and bone.

Her red lips on my ear. Your voice saying, “We need access to her room. Rumor is, she has a soft spot for soldiers.” You, across the room with a hard on. You, in Berlin, New York, Tokyo, Bangkok, TimbukFuckingtu, in a wheat field, coming apart inside my hand.

“John, John.”

_Let me. Let me. Sherlock._

The barrier bulged inside my mouth, hot come pushing through, as I sucked you hard, working my tongue under your glans as you came, spilling inside your trousers, inside my mouth. Your stomach shuddering under my palm as I pressed you against the car. Your fingers in my hair, twisting, pulling. My name on your tongue.

I stood, my knees aching, pain sparking up the backs of my thighs, something wild inside my chest, I pushed your shoulders flat against the car.

“Why didn’t you let me go with you?” My voice was broken as if you had fucked my throat. I was raw with it. Torn. Split open from it.

You, in all those cities, imagining someone else’s hands on me, imagining them as your own.

You, last night, asking me to seduce that woman. Watching her put her hands on me, wondering how far I'd go.

What you said next struck me hard, lightning cracking behind my ribs,

“Why did you let me go?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to happierstill for the awesome pyjama bottom prompt. <3 <3 <3


	3. III

“You, you. You are being dreadfully unfair,” I stammered, “how can you _dare_ to ask me that?”

“What would you have done?” you asked, incessant, undeterred, “if I had asked you to fuck her?”

You wrapped your hands around my waist and steered me backwards and I stumbled, shaking my head like an idiot, stricken silent with your questions and the look on your face, still flushed from orgasm: inscrutable.

“Will you do anything I ask John?”

I licked my lips, salt like blood on my tongue, “I am here to be used, you know that. I trust you. You said we needed to get into her room, you said I should seduce her. You said—”

You turned me, exerting pressure until I stepped back and was brought up short against the grill of the Morris.

“Climb up,” you said and, with your help, I did.

The hood of the car was cool and smooth against my over-heated skin as you stepped up between my knees and ran your hands up the backs of my arms, fingertips drawing lightly through the fine sheen of sweat.

“Would you have done it if I asked?” you whispered, your eyes trained on my mouth, your lashes clumped and wet and curving against your cheek. I sunk my hands into your hair, the sticky strands clinging to my skin. I urged you up to me. My blood pounded dully through my body. I felt sluggish, with the heat, with the last ebbing of pleasure, saturated and heavy. You resisted me, tipping your head back into my hands instead, to pin me with your eyes.

“Would you have followed all the way through? If I had asked you to?”

My heart sped up and I shook my head. I couldn’t understand what you were after.

“You would have made a beautiful pair.”

“Sherlock.” My solar plexus was a tight knot. I found it hard to breathe around it.

“I was imagining it, while I watched you. Imagined you in the elevator, pressing her up against the mirrors, your knee between her thighs, the silk of her dress catching on your trousers as she rocked herself off against your thigh.”

I groaned involuntarily. Guilt and lust warring equally inside my confused body with anger and resentment.

“Or maybe…” you murmured, “it was later in the evening, after everyone had cleared out and you simply picked her up and laid her out on the bar.” Your hands fell to my knees and, thumbs dragging up the insides of my thighs, you ran your hands up my legs until they framed my cock, lying soft against my groin.

Under the weight of your gaze it twitched, a surge of blood plumping it up.

Your hands moved up to my waist. Softly, darkly, “Lie down for me, John.”

God, help me, I did as you asked.

 _It’s a game_ , I told myself. _A fantasy. Nothing more._

_Nothing more._

“You would have pushed her dress up,” you went on, “all the way up her legs,” and I could see it in my mind, the emerald dress in the crooks of my thumbs, rushing up her soft brown legs like eddying water to gather in satiny ruffled folds at her waist. “She would have on some kind of tiny, ridiculous knickers. The kind you love, John.” I squirmed against the metal, my sweat slick skin gliding, thinking, no, no she wouldn’t have worn any. You said, “She was the fussy type, yes? She would have been bare beneath them, don’t you think?” I shook my head, breathing hard, looking down the length of my body at you, at the icy fire of your eyes. “No?” She would have been trimmed and maintained but she would have kept her bush and when I told you that you blushed a deep, startled crimson and your eyes went absolutely black and you said, “Indeed,” and leaned forward and buried your nose in my pubic hair.

I moaned and arched reflexively into the touch, my hand settling on the back of your head, pushing you down into the wet curls, as she would have pushed my head down into the soft thatch of black hair, coiling against the tip of my nose as I nuzzled at her.

“What would she have smelled like?” you asked, looking up at me, dappled in the shifting light from a wind-tossed tree filtering sunbeams through the open door at my back.

“Salt,” I said, licking my lips, sweat a thick brine on my tongue, as I closed my eyes against the sight of you licking beads of sweat from the springy coils that surrounded my spent cock, which was growing thicker by the second. Thinking to myself, she would have smelled like the breeze off a sunlit sea. “Wet,” I said out loud, “she would have been soaking,” and you groaned into my skin, opening your hot wet mouth on the flushed skin of my inner thigh as my legs fell wider, my hips hitching up, my hand digging in, pushing you down, down, until you sucked and sucked and sucked. Leaving me purple and throbbing, stinging all over; a twin to the one on my neck. Thinking, _Bastard_. Moaning, “Oh god, oh _fuck_ ,” as you trailed the tip of your nose lower and into the slippery crack of my arse.

Amelia Cartwright grew up in Wales with a mum who hailed from Palestine. Her father had been in the army, stationed in Cairo with the British consulate during the Six Day War. They had met in the ensuing chaos, a refugee and the son of a Welsh fisherman, and moved back to Wales when his tour of duty was up. Amelia had gone to Oxford, had founded an internet startup company in the 90’s in California, gotten rich, and then turned pirate. Rather, the Robin Hood of pirates, that is. According to Mycroft she was syphoning off money from corporations, billionaires, governments, etc from all over the world. What Mycroft wanted, besides her locked up, was to know what she was doing with the money because apparently none of it had ended up in her personal accounts. Apparently, from what Interpol could tell, she was sending the money to non-profits worldwide. She had been doing this for a decade at least from what they could tell, all over the world.

Your hands wrapped around my ankles. Hot palms cupped the backs of my calves, hair prickling. Thumbs dipped into the sweaty backs of my knees and held them out. Held me open.

 _A game_ , I thought wildly.

My skin felt two sizes too small for all the things I wanted, was trying not to want. I was muddled with it, my mind hazy and slow. If I were a better sort of man I would have said stop, would have made tea, would have forced us to talk about all the unforgivable things we had forgiven that were getting dregged up from the depths where we thought they had turned to so much inconsequential silt. Thoughts were mixing up with themselves. Green silk and red hair and your hands and the smell of dry burning grass. I lay there on my back and all I could see behind my eyelids were the plum pink, drenched folds of a slick swollen cunt and your tongue dipping out to lap at them, just as, between my legs you licked me hot and wet and close and so bloody good and I pressed myself down, whining and desperate, onto your mouth.

The barrel of a gun pressed into my side, as she steered me out of the ballroom, your eyes meeting mine in the mirror just before we exited the room, weaving through the crowd to follow.

Your black hair with its sweat sticky roots slipping between my fingers. Your shoulders hunched up by your ears. The curve of your spine punctuated by the knobs of your vertebrae, the damp hollow of the small of your back. I licked my own lips for the taste of it.

Broad, slow swipes of your tongue over my hole. The squelch of spit and sweat as you got me wet and wetter, sopping with it.

“Tell me,” you rasped, nosing your way up to the base of my cock, now fully erect and dripping on my stomach. “Tell me how you would do it. I’ve never eaten out a…a… _pussy_ …before.” I think you meant it to be cutting and dirty, but it comes out mostly off balance, the word clumsy on your tongue, and it made me smile in utter fondness and scratch my fingers against your scalp, and you blushed and looked annoyed and on the verge of stroppy, so I said, ameliorating, “At first you want to tease around the clit, work the folds and go inside her, circle around now and again, until she’s begging for it,” and you, eyes still on mine, sucked my cock into your mouth as retribution, and I choked and my head knocked back against the car with a bang.

You sunk down and I gripped your hair tight in my hands and held you there, your throat fluttering against my leaking slit.

“You want me to beg for it?” I gasped, looking down the red expanse of my body to where you were bobbing up, drawing a deep breath in through your nose, cheeks pink. “You want me to moan like a whore for it? Beg you to eat my arse out? To choke on my cock? To lick my greedy cunny until I come so hard I can’t see straight?”

You moaned around me, working your mouth over the head, tight and perfect, sucking me hard.

“Do it, lick my hole like a _pussy_ ,” I said, breathless, my heart hammering against my ribs, my hips writhing against the hood of the car. “Lick me so good, Sherlock. Get me dripping. Fuck my hole with your tongue. Do it. Do it. Please. _Please_.”

Amelia never would have been reduced to a tart saying please for a filthy wet fuck. I, however, was not above it. In fact, I got harder. Impossibly. Helplessly.

You popped off my cock and cupped my arse, lifting me up for a better angle, before once more burying your face between my cheeks. I grabbed onto my knees to hold them steady and moaned loud and long as you probed the tip of your tongue inside the pulsing rim of my body.

I shoved down, my back squeaking, catching against the car, where my sweat had dried. Pain burned across my shoulders, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care. I wanted you deeper. Wanted the fat meat of your tongue to stretch me out. To get so deep it would relieve the ache throbbing inside me. Tongue slipping out of me, you closed your lips around the ring of muscle and suckled at it and I babbled, unintelligibly, “Yeah, fuck me, fuck me. Oh god, Sherlock,” as you shoved yourself to the root inside me, teeth bristling against me.

I lost it then, the fantasy merging with reality, overwhelming me, swamping me, sucking me down. Amelia’s soft brown thighs pressing against my ears as I— _you_ —licked her— _me_ —over and over. Calum’s hands— _your_ hands—fisting my strangled, starving cock.

Surging up all at once, a roar of blood, _aching aching aching aching throbbing rising crashing_ coming hard.

Coming hard.

Coming hard.

_Why did you let me go?_

I didn’t.

I didn’t.

                                            I did  
                                                       n’t

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to GWWG for encouraging sex on the hood of a car. Where would I be without my friends?
> 
> Nowhere, that is where.


	4. IV

You just came inside from mowing the little patch of grass in the back garden and the larger one in the front and you bent down over me in my desk chair, my head tipped back, upside down, and kissed me good afternoon. You were handsome in your shirtsleeves, a pastel blue that matched your eyes, and your cheeks were rosy. There was dandelion fizz caught in your stubble, and you were still wearing your slouchy wide brimmed gardening hat that once belonged to Mrs. Hudson and was a very fetching shade of violet. You smelled sun sweet, grass sweet, indefinably _you_ sweet, and your lips were soft and warm against mine, your tongue altogether wanton inside my mouth. “Tea?” you murmured, rubbing our noses together affectionately, before pulling back.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

And because I believe you fundamentally misunderstood what happened that day in the garage, it is time to finish this tale.

  
**********

I ran.

Peeled myself off of the hood of the car, my heart pounding, all of my insides spilling out. I felt ill, dizzy, disoriented. You said my name I am sure of it, but I was deaf to all but the oceanic throb of blood in my ears. I gathered up my things. I spent some time searching for one of my trainers, but when you reached out and touched me with your— _their_ —hands I startled and fled.

The water in the shower struck my skin like small stones. Icy pelts biting at my hot flesh.

You rattled the door knob and said my name again.

You could have picked the lock easily.

I almost wished you would.

Then I could have shouted at you.

Then I could have found a channel for all this rage I held boiling inside me.

I think you think it was rage I felt towards you. But it wasn’t so specific as that. I had no satisfactory answers to your questions and that was part of it. But it was mostly a deep-seated hatred directed at Moriarty and the events he wrought. It was also a helpless sort of remorseful acceptance of the men we were and the lives we lived and the dangers that naturally attended them. That we risked each other just by who we were and what we did. That we were sundered by it. That, in order for us to stay alive, we had had to live apart for two years. And it made me miserable to think of you, alone, so alone, and unable to find comfort or solace in my memory, in my touch. It was never about you or what you were forced to do or how you coped. I hope you believe it, dear heart.

Instead of breaking in, you left me alone, and so I stood under the cold spray until I was shaking with a chill, the anger leached out, bled out, all of me scoured raw, scrubbed clean.

You were sitting on the edge of our bed, still dressed in your, what were no doubt at that point, _disgusting_ , pajama trousers, when I came out of the bathroom.

Your long feet were covered in dust and leaving chalky streaks on the hardwood.

Your face was pale. Your lips blanched. Your pupils two pinpricks in a whitewashed sea.

Your hands hung between your knees, wrists limp, wrung out.

I didn’t know what I wanted to say until I was across the space and astride your lap.

“John,” you said, rough. It caught beneath my ribs, a thorn.

“Kiss me,” I countered, slipping my hands behind your neck. “You haven’t kissed me yet.”

You shook your head, your hands clenched in the duvet at your sides, your lips tight and turned down at the corners.

I touched our foreheads together and breathed your breath.

“Sherlock Holmes, the day we find something that can’t be solved with kisses is the day we know we’re in real trouble.”

Your eyes flicked between mine, uncertain.

“Kiss me.”

Your lips parted.

“Kiss me.”

I leaned in. I tilted my head. I waited. I needed you to close the remaining distance.

Oh, my love.

There.

See?

Do you see?

There is nothing that can’t be solved if we are together.

Even unforgivable choices we made when we had no choice at all.

You survived.

Who was I to judge you for how you had managed it?

You survived.

You came back to me.

Sod the rest of it.

Your mouth opened under mine and your arm slid around my waist, your hand cradling the back of my head tenderly. You were gentle, your touches tentative.

I wanted none of it.

I pushed you back into the covers, shimmied your pajamas off, climbed back over you, and settled my weight down into you.

“Kiss me,” I said, and you did.

Fiercely, possessively, passionately.

Wholly yourself.

The others dissipated.

Green silk, red hair.

Our bodies slipped against each other, my skin, cool and soft and smelling of soap; yours, tacky and slick and smelling of musk and salt. Our legs tangled together, our cocks caught between our bellies; we rolled this way and that, our mouths parting on quiet desperate loving sounds. Our hands smoothing over scars from bullets and knives and needles and the fleeting bruise of a woman’s mouth.

When I took you inside me some indefinite amount of time later, it was me who pinned you to the bed, our fingers wound up together, over your head. Our kiss swollen mouths never far apart. Our chests were pressed together, I could feel your rib cage expand against my own with each breath, could feel the beat of your heart against mine, our bodies cupping each other like hands around a flame.

  
***********

  
I can hear you padding about in the kitchen in your socks. The burble of the kettle, the clink of the china, the juicy snick of the knife through a lemon. Will we take it at the table, kitchen windows open to the Downs? Curled up on the couch? At our respective desks, separate, but together?

I don’t care.

I will take you any way I can.

Thank you for this life, my love.

It is more than I had ever hoped to have.

Once you read this, come find me. We can toast Amelia Cartwright, who you let go with a warning, and who is, hopefully, still free and wrecking some quieter havoc somewhere as the dread pirate Robin Hood, somewhere beyond Mycroft’s reach and a lengthy prison sentence.

After that, well, that’s up to you.

I am here to be used.

;)

Ever yours,  
John


End file.
